When did you know he was "ready"?

So, DH and I have been talking for YEARS about kids (since long before he was DH) we are both very clear of each other’s feelings. I have wanted children my whole life, and when we met he thought never wanted them.

After many, many, many conversations we’ve reached the point where he’s come to realize it’s not that he doesn’t want children, it’s that he’s scared to death of having them “too early” and ending up resenting having kids because they keep him from doing the things he enjoys in life. Sadly, this is something we’ve watched a few friends go through.

We’ve been married for just over a year and a half now, and again, we’ve been living together for 7, known eachother for 11.

I am ready to have kids, I have no doubts or hesitations in that. I am 25, soon to be 26, and he will be 29 in April. We reached the point in our conversations that he does want kinds, just “not yet”. I can’t believe I’m the only woman who has ever been in this situation…

So, my question is, when/how did you both know you were “ready”?

If you were ready before him, how did you talk about it, and/or help him become ready without pressuring him into the decision?

Our situation is also somewhat complicated because I have a medical condition that is likely to make it difficult for me to get pregnant, and very painful for me while we are TTC (because I will have to stop all treatment and pain management medications in order to get pregnant at all). So unfortunately for us, we wont be able to take a laissez faire approach or the NTTNC. When we try it has to be all-in.

I’m a very impatient woman so I kept bringing it up each month lol and for a while he would just talk about how he wasn’t ready yet, wanted to save more, blah blah and then one month he was just like “okay I think we should start trying”. I was shocked and so excited. I think that it’s just something you have to keep communicating about, and I’m sure he will let you know when he truly is ready. Also my DH was so stuck on the “perfect time” until I finally convinced him that there is no such thing!

My problem is DH doesn’t have any REASONS he feels unready, he just isn’t…

His favorite thing to do when a friend brings it up is to say something like “another 10 years or so, then I’ll be ready” And there’s a part of me that’s afraid he’s not 100% joking when he says stuff like that!

@juliette.eliza: Ooh! Great question! When you figure this out, PLEASE let me know! DH and I are going round and round about what we want to accomplish before babies. I’ll be 26 in August, he 28 in July, together for 8 1/2 yrs, married for 6 months, living together for 5 years – so, similar situation…

Most days I’m all for waiting because we want to sell our townhome and upgrade to a single family home, and this is my last semester for my Associate’s degree, so I want to do those first. But the plan is to have both of those boxes checked by the end of the year, so…. sometimes my uterus is just like “Y U NO HAVE BABY?” Ah… hormones. I swear, baby fever is harder and harder to keep at bay these days.

@MargaritaVille: I totally feel you! DH and I are in a similar boat, we graduated college, bought our first home, and paid off all our unsecured debt. Last year he got the promotion he’s been working towards for 2 years, and now we’re relocating so he can open a new office for his company (his proposal to them) so, we sold our starter-home and are having a custom home built (it’ll be done around March 1st) on 1.5 acres. Obviously, at this exact moment things are in flux since we’ll be moving next month, but once we’re settled into the new place, I’d really like to start, and I just don’t know how to see if he agrees without risking him feeling like I’m pushing him to be ready.

I can relate to that. I didn’t want to put pression, but I kept bringing up this topic and DH always said he was not ready. He even asked me to stop bringing this up, we fight over this and I waited almost 2 years without talking about it.

Finally, his little brother will have a baby in march and they talked during christimas vacations. His brother told him that he never will be totally ready, but that he will be able to still do things he appreciate. Maybe it is because it didn’t came from me, but that night he told me he was ready to TTC.

We are both 29, it’s been 2 years since I first thougth that I was ready. It’s not a good idea to push him if he is not ready because if he gets mad, he will always bring this up (“It’s your kid, YOU wanted it, etc.”)

@juliette.eliza: DH isnt ready yet, but neither am I. I want to wait another year maybe two he wants to wait about a year and a half. He said he will be ready when he is 30. He turns 29 in July. I think it is rare for anyone to be 100% ready. I think its more the women and men that have been TTC for a while to be more ready than those just starting. As much as I would love to have a kid now since my friends are pregnant, its just not the right time for us.

Sounds like a lot of guys have the same problem – want kids, but don’t know when… Don’t want them too early… Don’t want to be held back… I think my FI was waiting for some epiphanic moment when suddenly he would feel 100% ready and the timing would be totally perfect – needless to say, he finally came round to the idea that if we waited for this to happen, we’d never have any kids.

Some of our friends are already babied-up, whilst others won’t be for a while, and I think it helps him that we’ll be somewhere in the middle.

For him, I think it helped to sit down and have a clear discussion about what he wanted to achieve in life generally, and talk through ways in which having kids won’t hold him back in anything on that ‘list’ 🙂

I will say that I have been ready to have kids for a while. I’ve always known I wanted to have kids, but the urge has really kicked in over the past year. DH on the other hand… Not ready. He wants kids, but asked “when” his answer is always “I don’t know.”

I let that go on for about a year, but after that I had enough. I sat him down and (kindly!) explained that he had been avoiding a timeline for an entire year and I had not questioned it. We are a bit older than you guys (28 and 32) so I told him that it was time for him to really think about what he wants and give me a timeline. “I don’t know” isn’t good enough. It took him about another month or so of us talking, of him thinking about it on his own, etc. But he decided that he will be “ready” in about 6 months.

Of course, we’ll see what he says 6 months from now. 😉

Anyways, the whole thing might seem a bit harsh, but DH is just one of those guys who needs a kick in the pants (and always appreciates my kick after the fact :D).

The only way to get through it is to keep talking about it. Ask him to think about it and come up with a REALISTIC date (not 10 years from now.. haha) when he thinks he might be ready to start trying.

And I do think it’s ok to mentioned your own timeline to get the conversation started. For example, I told DH I wanted to start trying in March or April. He countered with August or September. So we agreed to revisit the conversation in May with a tentative compromise of TTC in June/July.

Anyways, this got really long, but I hope it was helpful to you in some way!

@juliette.eliza: That’s a toughie situation. DH knew he wanted to be a dad before 30 (he’s currently going on 29 February 18), but we wanted to wait at least a year after the wedding.

About a month before our one year anniversary, we were both ready, but had been sticking to our original agreement of trying after 1 year. Finally I am just like, ‘What are we waiting for?” He didn’t know, and he said he was more than excited to start trying because he wants to be a dad more than anything.

So, in our case, DH has always wanted to be a dad, but timing-wise he wanted to wait a bit. Secretly he had been wanting to try for a while, but we just didn’t rush it until I asked him why we were waiting.

We had a serious talk about it (at a wine bar, where all talking should be done) and hammered out when we’d like to start trying. I thought it would be easier if we had a set date. We discussed that having unprotected sex doesn’t immediately produce a baby, etc. I am older so that sort of focused his mind, he does want kids. He doesn’t want to start right after the wedding and I respect that.

My advice is to say what you would like, and then give him a chance to counter with something also specific. That’s how we worked towards ours.

@juliette.eliza: I have baby fever to the extreme and of course, DH is not ready. We’ve talked about having kids and even picked out names, he’s just not quite ready. I understand it’s a huge step and life changer, but Ihope I can get a more specific time frame from him. We definitely have it narrowrd down to sometime this year, but I’m a planner…I need specifics!

I feel kind of silly saying this, because it seems obvious, but have you asked him when he thinks he’ll be ready to start trying?

My husband was ready before me and I’ve only recently decided that I’m ready. I did try to speed up the process by looking at cute babies and starting to learn about TTC, pregnancy, parenting etc. I’m a planner, so learning about this stuff definitely makes me feel more prepared (but still fairly terrified!) to get pregnant and be a parent.

@juliette.eliza: Neither of us pressured each other. There was a point after our first anniversary where DH and I had moderately serious chat and decided that perhaps fall of 2013 was a good time to start trying. We were trying to time the baby somewhat due to my crazy coaching schedule (we kind of suceeded).

To be completely honest having a baby did not terrify or make DH nervous at all. He was in fact ready months before I was to start TTC. When we did start NTNP in September and then actually trying in October and November he was excited (of course he was, all that BD) and I was a nervous wreck. I knew he was ready from the moment we started discussing it because he was just so calm about the whole thing.